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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/01/ukraine-faces-winter-humanitarian-crisis-with-energy-grid-on-the-brink>
"Ukraine faces a winter humanitarian crisis unless it can prevent a collapse in
its electricity supply caused by the relentless campaign of Russian bombing,
the chief executive of the country’s national grid has said.
Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the chief executive of Ukrenergo, said “virtually all”
large non-nuclear power stations in the country had been hit, as well as more
than 30% of the network’s routing substations.
Describing the position as critical, the energy boss said Ukraine had asked
western countries for badly needed spare parts last week – and repeated calls
for more missile defence systems to help prevent damaging attacks.
“This is the biggest missile attack on electricity infrastructure in history.
Therefore, the impact is huge. Unfortunately the situation is critical. They
are trying to specifically destroy the Ukrainian power system, and this
supplies tens of millions of the population,” he said.
If the Russian attacks continued, “power cuts in Ukraine will become longer and
longer”, Kudrytskyi warned, adding that despite Ukrenergo’s efforts, it was not
possible to repair the grid as fast as it was being destroyed. “It’s much
easier obviously to launch missiles than to restore substations,” he said.
The focus now is on keeping the lights on. “Before these missile attacks, the
main goal was to supply as much energy as our customers need. However, now
we’re speaking about the survival of the system,” Kudrytskyi told the
Guardian during an air raid warning in Kyiv.
Electricity was also necessary to sustain gas supplies, the chief executive
said. “If the customers will spend too much time without electricity, and if
heating systems have no connection to electricity, that will create big, social
humanitarian problems.” He said Russia wanted to create “a humanitarian
catastrophe” in Ukraine."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
